Hegemonía y Economía Política Internacional: Aportes de la Teoría Crítica

Abstract

In the Social Sciences and the IR fields, hegemony is one of the concepts that implies the most theoretical difficulties for its construction and apprehension. The reason may lie on the extensive and diverse senses in which hegemony might be understood, or how this concept has been filled with a diversity of meanings. Such a lack of a concrete definition, especially in the IR field, turns hegemony into a term that might confer the idea of homogeneous totality, meanwhile explaining the different and particular relationships and degrees of power, in a diffuse and imprecise way. Thus, this paper proposes a general approach about the concept hegemony, and the relationship between hegemony, power and domination, as it might be understood in the Social Sciences and IPE context; therefore, it proposes to develop this theme under the critical theory perspective; and finally, it evaluates the specificity of the use of the concept hegemony, within the problem of power.